Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Words of the Father

Words of the Father

Some poor people have peanuts growing in their yards and love in their hearts; the boy is happy with his G. I. Joe and the girl with her Barbie; they all sleep in one bed together since they
have only the one bedroom, and the parents expect that when their children grow up, no one will call them ‘poor white trash’ since, God willing and the crick don’t rise, the boy and girl are going
to stay in school and learn to read real nice someday, and when we visited them we were careful to walk single file down the path through the Goober pea plants to the front porch without
stepping on a single tendril, and single file back out to the faucet to wash the peanuts before they were boiled and we ate them like that, fresh and good.

But other poor people have nothing in their yard but a few blades of grass and a broken screen door, I was forced to notice that day. “Don’t go over there,” said Jessica. “His spirit is still
in his bed until he be laid to rest. Come sit on my bed with me and Barbie.”

I was wearing my new dress for the funeral, off-white with Hunter green trim, in some synthetic wool which was scratchy and hot. I remember that dress because I was wearing it to school a few months later when I got my period, and I came home with a red spot right on the border between the green and the white. My mother told me in a very matter-of-fact tone that it was simply unacceptable to have bloodspots showing on my clothes, but she didn’t tell me that I should have taken it off and gone around in my underwear at school, so I never did know what she wanted me to do other than feel ashamed. My mother had ordered the hated dress from the Sears catalog, I wonder whether in unconscious retribution for going shooting with ‘that rapscallion’ beer-swilling cigar-puffing baby brother of my father, who had come on my birthday and taken me and my older sister and brother out to the forest clearing on the edge of somebody’s pasture to learn how to use a shotgun, ‘now that you are twelve’, with tin cans and sun bleached cattle skulls as targets. This was really more for my brother than for me: my brother was feeling humiliated since he was the only one in his class at school not driving yet. “You say ‘every’, said my father, “I’ll tell you ‘every.’ If every boy in your class drives a figure eight
around every pair of stop signs from here to Memphis, and every girl in your class drives a figure eight around every pair of stop signs from here to New Orleans, every day after school, you still are not allowed to drive until you are old enough to get a license.”

The road to Memphis was infamous for liquor stores, and as for New Orleans, if you want Bible I’ll tell you Bible, and if
you want popular culture I’ll explain it that way too. There is a book in the Bible called ‘Jonah’, and in this book, Jonah is instructed by God to go to ‘that great and wicked city’, doubtlessly alluding to New Orleans. As for popular culture, there was a song beginning, “There is a house in New Orleans...”, and my sister told me that there was a mistake in that song, which should have continued, “It’s been the ruin of many a girl” instead of “many a boy” as in the published version. Guns and motor vehicles were the two essential tools for adolescents, so my father agreed to the shooting lesson, but my mother was not happy that I went, anyway. So she sat home and plotted to give me something in Hunter green, to remind me of the shooting lesson,
and there I was, with another reason to dislike the dress: It made me self-conscious in front of Jessica, whose dress was, let us say, not Sears quality. We were on the front porch, since my
father wanted to talk to the bereaved parents alone. Jessica explained that she and her brother slept out here in the warm weather. The window in the main room was too hard to open and the
ceiling fan didn’t work.

“Jimmy was too good to live-that’s why God took him,” she explained of her brother. I did not contradict her. My father had strictly warned me not to contradict the bereaved when they
spoke of the deceased. What I wanted to know was why the fourteen-year-old had killed himself, and how, but my father had said that I was too young to have to hear about that.

I stood up, and she got agitated. “Don’t go over there,” she reminded me. I wasn’t; I was only standing to stretch and let a little sweat evaporate, but it made her nervous. What was in that bed anyway? Blood? Body parts? This was new to me; it was the first time that my father had taken me with him to arrange for the burial of a suicide. He was the only minister in three counties willing to take them, even for money, and in this case there was no money to be made.

“Le’s me take you down to the Casey Jones wreck,” she suggested.
I had been before; in fact, our next door neighbors and our only white neighbors within a mile had been girls in town at the time of the famous wreck; they had taken us to the site and
described what it had looked like on the day celebrated in the well-known ballad. But I followed her without a word, through the barren yard to the dirt road and up to the highway halving the
tiny town, which I suspect had shrunk in the sixty years since the wreck, and past a house and shuttered building to our destination, where a historical plaque stood in the long grass next to the railroad crossing.

A black woman and mulatto child were approaching Barnett’s General Merchandise. “She’s awful light,” remarked Jessica.

“Must have a white father,” I responded.

“What?” she asked. “Are you ignernt? Niggers can’t have children with white people.

They ain’t got no souls. My daddy says, ‘Put a three-piece suit on a nigger and he’s still a monkey.’”

“Then why are some people that color?”

“Have you heard of albinos?” she asked me.

“Don’t argue with the bereaved,” my father had said, so I gave it up.

“Mr. Barnett is mean to my daddy,” said Jessica. “He waits on the niggers first.”

Now that was quite an accusation. Everybody knew that the etiquette in establishments which catered to both races in the same place was to wait on blacks only when there were no
whites needing service. Jessica’s daddy must have done something egregious such as try to procure goods without money on more than one occasion.

“That makes my daddy real mad. He has to drink, and then he can’t work.”

We headed back after a longing glance at the Coke machine. Jessica was eulogizing her brother to the best of her ability. “He wanted me to have his comic books,” she said. “Now I have
a doll and comic books.”

She bounded up the steps and stood in front of her brother’s bed. “Now you sit down first,” she ordered me. I hesitated, and as I stood closer to her than she wanted, a breeze wafted a familiar smell over to me from the direction of the bed. “Oh,” I said, “my brother too. He used to wet the bed all the time until my mother sewed something into his pajamas to wake him up at night.”

Jessica shed her vigilant demeanor. She lay on her own bed and started to cry. “It was my fault,” she said. “My daddy told me not to bring home a soul, but I up and brung a girl home
from school. Jimmy told the girl he was a real man, since he done quit school and went to work.

And what’d you reckon that girl said? She said, ‘You’s real all right — you’s a real baby, but you ain’t got no real mama to clean up after you.”

“Not your fault,” I murmured to her. Not her brother’s death. But all those racist thoughts and words and whatever deeds she had to her name, for those she would have to answer.

I could hear my father inside, explaining that the coroner had ruined Jimmy’s clothes, that he needed clothes to be buried in, and if not, perhaps a sheet. His mother surrendered the sheet
from the marital bed over his father’s angry objections.

My older sister played piano for the funeral that afternoon; the organist wouldn’t come, and she was more proficient already anyway. The librarian’s brother was there: my mother had
called five houses, gotten three responses, and one person willing and able to show up. The majority of that church had turned against us already for Father’s involvement in the Civil Rights Movement, about a third were neutral, and the librarian Father had in his pocket.

The brother still had rough edges; he was yet to tell me, in reference to the hired help that he scheduled to work
on his farm according to Central Standard Time, that “a nigger will never understand daylight savings time.” And I was yet to argue with him about it — that was the great thing, that he was
open to argument on the subject.

After the usual short service we went out to put the body into the grave my brother, my sister, and the librarian’s brother had dug. My father held his Bible aloft with a great flourish:
“‘The Lord has given, and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.’ These words, which are in all the funeral services, are good words and strong words. Job says them in
chapter two. But sometimes we can’t hear them. Sometimes all we can hear is what Job says in chapter three: ‘Why is light given to him that is in misery, and life to the bitter in soul, who long for death, but it comes not, and dig for it more than for hid treasures; who rejoice exceedingly, and are glad, when they find the grave? Why is light given to a man whose way is hid, whom God has hedged in?’”

The bereaved mother looked at the Bible in my father’s hands as if to be sure that what she had just heard was really from the Holy Book. She fell kneeling on the side of the hole and
wailed, “Jimmy, Jimmy” until her husband pulled her away.

After supper I thought to tell my mother that Jimmy’s family would need a new sheet. “Yes,” seconded my father without looking up from his book, “and a new clothesline too. Why don’t you pay them a condolence call?”

I showed my mother which unmarked dirt road to take. Nobody was on the porch now.

My mother squinted and pursed her lips at the strident, slurred noises coming from inside. I knocked loudly, and the voices stilled. Jessica’s mother opened the door enough to show her red
and tear-streaked face. She acknowledged us with the merest of nods. My mother offered her the secondhand items, and she snatched them and closed the door in a single motion. From inside
there was a loud crash.

“Grief does things to people,” apologized my mother. “It really does.”

________________________

Bio: Miriam Berele grew up in rural Southern Mississippi, this story being set in the northernmost of the many counties where she lived in those days. Now she has lived in Chicago for much too long.

Friday, August 26, 2011

Delicate April on Hodd’s Mountain

Delicate April on Hodd’s Mountain
Tom Sheehan


Oliver Kettering remembered almost everything. And judgments came of that memory. So it was that two coincidental things happened within seconds of each other as he sat on his porch: April, the sweetest month to him for close to 80 years, was into a third most memorable day, and his youngest granddaughter, Holly Gatersby, had come down off Hodd’s Mountain in a sour mood. Showing attitude in her face and in a most determined walk, she went past her grandfather, without waving a salute, right to Fleet’s General Store. The Kettering patriarch, on the porch of the small house he had righted from a barn more than a half century earlier, two wives ago, six boys and girls and six good hounds ago, noted the rigor of her walk. “The girl’s only 17,” he said to himself in polar judgment, remembering 17 like it was last night right after the evening meal. Like then, Delicate April was touching him with her ten delicious fingers. He was sure April would never let go her grip on him.

He hoped that somehow April’s ten good fingers would also touch Holly Gatersby before the day was out.

“It’s a damn shame if they ain’t doin’ just that,” he continued in his communal prayers, the thick white beard reacting to a breeze more than his jaw at self-talk, the hazel eyes catching early sun and making them live as lit kindling. His half left leg was thrown up on a barrel top, haphazard, bent. Every time he threw that leg up on railing or barrelhead, Oliver Kettering swore he could see Brutus the mule snapping back at him the fiercest of kicks. A dozen or so neighbors, in a hurry, had come to his rescue a good fifteen years back. Once he swore he remembered every face of theirs; now he wasn’t so sure he could pull all into one scene again.

In quick summary Oliver acknowledged most folks around about were kin of his, from one strain or another, and mostly friendly otherwise. He understood his own “otherwise” as being poor advice that he’d tossed from his present spot in the world, the sole chair on the generally-proclaimed Judgment Porch where he sat at the moment. Oliver, as all Hodd’s Mountain knew, was a curious mixture himself…he neither looked like he was near 80 (seemingly half that age) though he oftentimes acted like 80… in proof he thought it had to be 30 years or more since people stopped calling him Ollie, sort of an extension of respect of what he had become the whole length of The Chawtenauga, advisor of all and such as he preferred to call it….

And Holly, true to one strain he knew as well as the book, was capable of going in one of two directions. Like her father Luden Gatersby, she could be idle, shiftless and sorry most of her life, like Luden a damn scarecrow of what he could have been; or, like her sister Marvel Alice Gatersby, she could, one illustrious day, haul up her damn britches and damn well get to work gettin’ out of a rut. Marvel Alice, after her britches hauling, hard work, daring, dreaming, was three years into college, the first girl off Hodd’s Mountain to do so in the best part of a hundred years. Though he loved Marvel Alice and her attitudes, he knew he loved Holly just as much; yet that thought caused him serious argument; did he love Holly a bit more because she needed more loving, and more security? He savored those thoughts in his usual fashion, fully and consequentially.

Then, in further adjudication, he said another prayer for her… Holly now mostly blessed in haymow adventures. Quickly he counted on his fingers his diverse intentions, marking with her name the deep sweep between thumb and index finger each time passing through that valley. Delicate April, as ever, coming around every year with sweet hope, touched him again and he prayed once more that its most decent enterprise and selection would include this grandchild of his at an obvious precipice of life, a place where he had been a time or two.

And so, absorption came on him again. A tremor in the bent leg, the hoisted leg, brought Brutus back in a hurry, and he spoke to nobody in particular, a sense of sharing accosting him, as he said: “Damned if I can’t smell old Brutus’ field work leather comin’ back from its winter stash. And I can see the old cinches, reins and checkreins hangin’ in the barn the last time I hung them up for good, seein’ them over these late years slowly givin’ way to dryness and crackin’. Every time I go in the barn, Old Plow, I swear on Eternity I can smell you.” In his mind, in all about him, came a cessation of all other images and thoughts as Brutus came home again. “You ain’t none lettin’ go either.” A furrow, as straight as a rifle shot across the back acres, from a long day past, fled its neatness through his mind.

Holly, in sudden realization, came back just as quickly in the mix of images; he could picture her down the road somewhere drying on the vine, ageing, missing the richness and true goodness of late years, her hair thinning, lips curling, thoughts dimming. “Oh,” he thought aloud, “what a mixture of hope and disillusion abounds.” It felt as though Brutus had kicked him again.

Then, from the mid-section of Old Smoky, the line of rock edging the road to Mt. Albion, his friend April sent down the smell of new maples afloat in the universe, and also the hidden horror of an old accident. His first wife, Therese Fablon Kennesy, came back in a rush, and he swore in another instance that he knew the same perfumed scent she had set adrift specifically at him one night at a dance almost 70 years ago. So drifted was that scent it they clung to him for her whole life. It was a special life until the wagon, with her and their first daughter Ida Ells, had gone down off that Mt. Albion road, straight onto a pile of boulders and the inevitable and unaccountable smithereens. Life then, for a bit, had rushed about like a headless chicken, and he had gone everywhere for every reason until his soul had quieted down. Sanity had lead to preservation, he swore.

*

Oliver’s bad leg gave off one small ache of memory, and Holly’s determined gait, so it said to him, was one of anger, and he judged it to be dead against her now-and-then boyfriend, Angus Hollerfield. Angus, handsome as handsome comes, more man than boy, knew all the paths and all the valleys of The Chawtenauga… and traveled them, as word went, usually after dark from forked leg to forked leg. One path led directly to Holly’s barn on the side of Mt. Albion, and most other paths had their own same conclusions, moonlight not withstanding. With a sense of wisdom, and long practice at life’s endless war, Oliver could damn near orchestrate the illuminated arguments rising out of gray matter and understandable hungers put in place at Creation itself.

In one memorable night on the Judgment Porch he had argued with great gusto against Merle Preblum whose daughter Alice Colber, named for her uncle Al, had apparently been dishonored in a neighbor’s barn. “Goddamn shame, Merle, you forget your manners and memory what you exercised in and out of a barn or two in your own time. The boy was coltish, not forsakin’ anything at all, and that girl a fair mare in her own right. They been right-minded for a good dozen years now. More power to ‘em both, that lesson in humanity and all its cravin’s.”

Oliver had sprung that same argument on Holly a time or two, or one interpretation of it, to make his point, to give her self-reflection something shiny to look at for a change.

“Way in the past, girl,” he had said, “perhaps 10 or 15 thousand years ago, or perhaps longer than that of which I ain’t sure, you can make up your own mind to whatever, someone kin to us back down the road, made up his mind about somethin’ and set the pattern and path for us, all of us. Makin’ us like we are, he did, and they ain’t much we can do about that decision of his and why it comes down to us. So just picture someone in your friend’s family, over the hill there, or off in another cave or another valley makin’ a decision that came down to your friend and they ain’t a helluva lot he can do either about that old granpap of his a few hundred steps back down on the ladder of Creation. Locked up in the blood, it is, tighter than the front door on the hive out there back of here.”

Holly, as most kids off Hodd’s Mountain, or for that matter anywhere in this here universe of looking up and looking back, paid little heed to words from an elder where sauces and hungers were involved. “He’s such a liar, Gramp. Out and out, a liar from the first word. Never once said he snapped another pair of bloomers like he ought to have said. Ownin’ up is important to people. And he didn’t spend a breath on it. Just holdin’ onto the goodies like he couldn’t ever let go.”

The blush of her pure pink was as healthy as the old gent could imagine it. “Girl,
you can imagine him in your image or in his image, but you don’t get both, and don’t try to make his image be your image. It don’t work that way. Never has, never will, believe me. You can go down to the river to pray for all of that, or up on the mountain in the mornin’ glory, but it ain’t comin’ to you on any silver platter, no matter how hard you pray. Best thing is to let him do the prayin’. That’s the secret in all of this here houndin’ us. He gets to do the thing best needed. Sooner or later, the way he combs his hair, how he holds his head, the path shows itself.”

Now, obviously on this sweet April morning, it appeared the frisky colt had run an odd course. “I best warn that boy of eternal loss,” he said half aloud, knowing April, in its most fierce grasp hardly ever lets go, and granddaughter Holly had as many good parts to her as anybody on Hodd’s Mountain.

In a sudden vision he saw the silhouette of Angus’ widowed mother, Best Pearl, and knew a slow, subtle ache of another sort. As part of the same vision, he could almost frame up the picture of a long-past forebear, Cro-Magnon or whatever name had been given him by people who invented such names, moving from cave to cave with more than one kind of fire with him or about him. The picture tickled the hell out of Oliver; Brutus and the ugly kick, and all the old leather work, made a hasty departure when he saw a saber-toothed tiger sitting beside a cave opening in the face of a dark cliff, licking at bone remnants, drooling. Time, so twisted upon itself, marched in the abrupt darkness across that imagined cliff. All Oliver Kettering’s genes, some thinking they were deeply hidden and nearly lost, gave thanks in a rush.

Best Pearl, upon hearing a caution come from him as they sat in her kitchen, said, without a bit of hesitation, “Oliver, you know well as I do, there is barns and then there is barns. They do make memory, I swear. We knowed ‘em and they know them, and like you always said, ‘It all makes the world one whirling place of addiction,’ and bless me so for sweet addiction.” She added a shyly spoken but clearly heard, “Oh, yes. My! My!”

She herself was a late mother, and now at 50 or thereabouts, prime and robust, a light within emanating, hair as blond as a bottle would allow it on short order for a special occasion, set tasks in a row. With near effortless moves she primped her hair, ran a cloth over the shiny blue-checkered oil cloth on her kitchen table, righted and smoothed out her apron with the sweep of one hand, and just as casually let an elbow touch the old man of the mountain… less some degree of work still in the till, as he often said.

“There is one way we can square those kids away, Oliver,” she volunteered. Immediately he somehow felt the old Cro-Magnon spirit moving in the woman. She tickled him right down to his funny bone, the hair shaping, the apron primping, the forgotten light hustled from some back acreage, the Cro-Magnon woman at her best. He figured whatever she had in mind was right as rain, and would have some prominence to it and a damned lot of years of refinin’.

“You just didn’t all of a sudden come up with that notion, did you? Or you been spendin’ some of the moonlight workin’ part time at it?”

“Oliver, I must admit, for only you to know, that I been that way ever since I seen you and Hustice Helen in the back of a wagonload of hay some time past. Never was any sinnin’ there either. Oh, my, no. No sinnin’ there, just naturalin’. And you never fooled me none with the philosopher stuff, knowing you’re a man all the way from the very beginnin’ you’re always talking about.”

In a queenly and outright manner she practically knighted him as she added, “You’re the mountain itself, Oliver, and I swear my boy is trackin’ the route you laid out so long ago over half of Hodd’s Mountain. That kind of talk is endless, you know, once it gets hold of by some hereabouts… and you can imagine where I’m pointin’.” Her nod was down the road from them, at the Town Pulpit, Bernadette Mabel. “She does swear by some things as being gospel good.”

Part of Oliver’s recall went skittering down the ways and valleys and over hills and hummocks long gone into mist. But a stubborn way held at some things so precious they seemed on their own not wanting to part. His smile was not an old man’s smile, nor was that smile one of boast.

“So what kind of an idea you been spinnin’ about in that pretty head?”

At last, he was thinking, things are getting kicked out in the open. He affirmed within himself, It’s time enough. Too much seed gone to pot.

So he said openly, “You thinkin’ we been wastin’ time and those young ones showin’ us a thing or two about time itself?” The old mountain was straining in him; it was bound to break loose in a landslide sooner than later. As he took in all signatures of any sort in the room, any leftover ownership marks that might have been dropped in passing, a line of her hip movement, subtle as tea smell in the back of the kitchen, eased its way from wherever it had been tucked away and made itself known again.

It was contagion and he believed in contagion.

“It’s easy, Oliver. You up and promise to marry me, do it all over again. We party, make speeches, get holden onto one another, and then you just up and back out of it all, like you went and changed your mind without a single fuss. Ought to slight hell out of that boy of mine. Make him somethin’ miserable ‘bout his mother getting’ stood so.”

He thought about it for the shortest spell. The picture of a Cro-Magnon man came back to him in all his raw glory. As if in a partnership with that older man of the mountains, he then said, “Whyn’t we make like I’m tryin’ on seducin’ you, getting’ you into your own bed and lettin’ him catch up to us.” It really wasn’t a question he had proposed. “Now that might scare the hell out of him, him bein’ the really worryin’ type boy we hope he is. That might put the thunder under him, shake his outlook all to hell and then some.”

“Oliver,” she replied, the mouth ajar with her words and a move at false surprise, “You do get past yourself sometimes for a man your age. I have to admit the thought’s been there more’n once since his nibs last took a belt out of me and got himself killed too on that bad turn of the road, like he was being served up one more time for all his shenanigans and such. There’s always been a good connection since we both lost folk on that crazy road up there. I think it’s been cookin’ for a long time.”


**

It was little more than a week later, and the stage was set.

The routine on Angus was decoded and duly noted, for Saturday was usually a night for Holly; a walk uphill for him, a new go at heaven for her, or a good shot at it. The maples and the early blossoms, the richness of new grass, the spill of a decent moon so soon after a few chilled nights the week earlier, said romance was well afoot, and the whole of Hodd’s Mountain echoed with possibilities, with encounters promised as sweet as could be dreamed.

Best Pearl had put on her long flannel nightgown, where pink flowers roamed at will, where the long folds allowed all beauty its hideouts. On her head the knot of hair, newly golden, was loosed and tossed for best of measures. In her mind, little was left for chance; the house spruced from corner to corner, as well as herself. Signs of loneliness she had borne for endless nights, were put aside, like the screen magazine at least three years old but radiant with a picture of one handsome dog of a movie star; and the tired, worn, nearly obliterated .45 Elvis record of new love was finally dropped into the waste bucket. But she was perfumed for the fare-the-well of all else she owned.

Scenes, she knew, were being set. A sudden glimpse of how movies were made came to her and just as quickly disappeared with an in-taken breath.

Oliver Kettering, the old man of the mountain, performer yet, waited down on the corner of Fleet’s General Store with some of the old bucks, passing time and tobacco and old stories between one another.

“Damn thing I noticed, Oliver,” Malcolm Brisbee said, “that you got yoreself pretty clean shaved for a Saturday night with the old boys. You ain’t one bit losin’ that bait on me; you got sonethin’ goin’ on we don’t know about, like you’d let us know just as many times you did before.” He raised his hands in bounden salute and waved them at the sky and whatever else. “I think we gonna run you for president, Oliver, or raise some damn fine stature for you at the end of the valley, some that all the old folks from here to the end of The Chautenawga can take heed.”

“It’s what I’m ever tryin’ to fathom, Malcolm, this boundless bit carryin’ on in us since Creation did it’s thing, and we ain’t got it figured out which way is really right and really wrong. Beats me at times all to dazzle, it does, lookin’ at it from all sides.” Oliver looked down the road toward Best Pearl’s house square and neat against the barn behind it. The image of a man of the caves came back to him in clear luster. “We look at things two ways or more every time out, seems to me, and I’m not lettin’ myself out of any argument here.”

“Oliver, you cut the furrow a little deep for me every now and then, and I suppose this here is another one of them now and thens, you figurin’ you’re still asittin’ on the mighty porch of deliverance and all us here at your feet waitin’ on judgment. But if you’re talkin’ about men and lady things, ain’t no way to hide it in mystery talk… it’s damn well mysterious all by its lonesome. When there’s honest couplin’ ‘tween folks, I can’t think there’s two ways of lookin’ at that, no matter what age we’re at.”

“That’s strictly the point I’m making, Malcolm. Honest couplin’ for the moment or for some kind of promise? The future counts itself on what’s goin’ on now.””

“Hell, Oliver, none of us knows what’s around the corner, never mind plannin’ on what we don’t know’s goin’ to be there. It ain’t logical for me, not enough to change my appetite for supper, that’s for sure.” He laughed his way out of the whole argument, coughed once and nodded as Oliver Kettering, the old man who ought to have a stature
raised up for him, walked off from the group of old timers and headed toward Best Pearl’s house still neat as a straight furrow against the barn at the other end of town.

The confrontation came in Best Pearl’s kitchen, not in her bedroom.

But Best Pearl’s essence had assailed Oliver from the moment he entered her small house at the edge of town. He could not stay away from her in her loose gown where all promise seemed to leap about as she moved around, lovingly, coyly, proud. They gabbed a bit. Stopped gabbing. Closed a bit. Came together a bit. Oliver’s right hand, hidden in the deep folds, was at anointment when Angus stormed into the room from outside the house.

The young Lothario of Hodd’s Mountain screamed at Oliver, who turned and said, “Only as far as you go with my granddaughter, same distance, and not making her any decent promise. Is that enough for you? Is that a truce? Or do I let your mother speak her piece right now?”

Best Pearl’s arms were still locked around Oliver’s neck.

Angus, before bolting in defeat, said, “All right, Old Man.”

And Best Pearl added “All right, Old Man,” perfectly happy with all considerations, though not in perfect mimicry of her son’s words.


______________________________________

Tom Sheehan

Bio note: Sheehan served with the 31st Infantry Regiment in Korea, 1951. His books are Epic Cures and Brief Cases, Short Spans, Press 53; A Collection of Friends and From the Quickening, Pocol Press. He has 14 Pushcart nominations, Georges Simenon Fiction Award, and is included in Dzanc Best of the Web Anthology for 2009 and nominated for 2010 and 2011. He has 209 short stories on Rope and Wire Magazine. Print issues include Rosebud Magazine (4), Ocean Magazine (7) among others. He has published 3 novels (An Accountable Death, Vigilantes East, and Death for the Phantom Receiver. Poetry collections include This Rare Earth and Other Flights; Ah, Devon Unbowed; The Saugus Book; and Reflections from Vinegar Hill.

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Sunday Dinner

Sunday Dinner
An excerpt from Ethel’s Song
By: Tori Bailey

Southern fare covered the dining room table covered with a white linen table cloth. Forest green tea glasses with their clear footed stems and floral pattern wedding china were like jewels sparkling at each seating. A platter filled with sliced roast beef rested on a bed of carrots, potatoes, and onions took the center spot. Bowls filled to the brim with creamy white mashed potatoes, turnip green, butter peas, pintos, fried corn, and piping hot angel biscuits were the accessories. Just as there was not a clear spot to be found on the table, each chair was occupied with its usual Sunday resident.

Ethel, seated comfortably at her command post at the head of the table and close to the kitchen, looked at each of the table’s occupants. Anne and Maggie sat next to their husbands, Keegan and Seth, on one side. Mathias, Kelli, and Thomas completed the other side. Her attention turned to the man at the opposite end of the table - Madison. She knew he was a gift sent from the good Lord above.

Peace filled her heart with each face smiling back at her. This was her family. “Let us bless this meal. Madison, will you give thanks?” In unison, everyone bowed their head as Madison gave thanks over the meal and the blessings of their lives including the newest addition, Christian.
An anthem of ‘amen’ responded to the end of the blessing, and the once quiet dining room was filled with a cacophony of conversations. Everyone began talking at once as bowls and plates were passed around the table. This was what Sundays were about - family. It was a time for everyone to come together and share the breaking of bread.
Seth turned his attention to Madison’s end of the table. “So, in thirty days you are going to be a hitched man. You still have time to escape a lifetime sentence of the ball and chain.” He loved the look of feigned horror on Maggie’s face.
Madison let out a chuckle enjoying the look of anticipation on Ethel’s face. He gave her a quick wink. “Thanks for reminding me of the short life my bachelor days have left. Trust me, it is something that has been weighing heavily on my mind. But I have to say that this is one sentence that I gladly take without hesitation.”

Anne patted her aunt on her shoulder. “Had you scared there for a minute didn’t he Aunt Ethel?”

“Honey, this ball and chain thing is a two way street. Maybe, I might be the one to decide to back out at the last minute.”
“Aunt Ethel, don’t we need to go for our final fitting this week over at ClaraBell’s?” Anne asked.

“I need to call her tomorrow and see when is a good time. What day is good for the two of you this week?”

“I’m busy with the breeding schedule tomorrow but will be in town mid-week to help Maggie at the airport,” Anne said as she took the last of the turnip greens.

Thomas relished the opportunity to yank his cousin’s chain. “Yeah, with as much breeding going on down at that farm it seemed like you should have one of your own and another on the way, cuz.”

“Well, it not because there is anything wrong with the Stallion.” Keegan piped up, enjoying the crimson stains on his wife’s cheeks.

A snort laugh escaped Maggie. “What’s so funny down there missy?” Madison asked.

“Matter of fact – Seth and I have been trying.” Maggie announced.
“Yeah, if I could just keep her feet on the ground long enough.” Seth leaned over and kissed Maggie on the cheek.

“Seth, honey, if you are trying to keep her feet on the ground then maybe you need to come to the barns to see what you are doing wrong,” Anne chided Seth. The red in Maggie’s face deepened.

“Here…here now. Not at the Sunday dinner table.” Ethel gently warned before the nature of the conversation became out of hand.
“Man, I’m tight as a tic.” Madison leaned back in his chair and rubbed his stomach.

Ethel surveyed the carnage of her Sunday dinner. The once full plates and platters were empty. She enjoyed listening to her family continue their banter. Everyone seemed to feed off each other.

_________________________

Author Bio:
One of Tori’s fondest memories growing up was Sunday dinners at my home when family came together. Her mother would always put the leaf in the table to fit all my aunts, uncles and grandparents around it. She’d dress the table with her finest table cloth, wedding china and the set of forest green tea glasses collected by her grandmother during the Depression years.


Tori’s second novel of the Coming Home series, Ethel’s Song, is scheduled for release in October. She currently makes her home in the Athens area with her husband and three rescue cats. Visit her website: www.readtoribailey for updates, sneak peeks, and other short stories.

Monday, August 22, 2011

Guest Post by John Milliken Thompson

John is treating us to a story about his family today at the Dew. After you read this, click on the link at the bottom at go read the Dew's review of his new book, The Reservoir!

Does every Southern writer have a family Civil War story?

My new novel, The Reservoir, is a mystery based on a true crime story set in Richmond two decades after the Civil War. People have asked me about my connection to Richmond, and I usually tell them that I had no real ties to the city before I starting researching the novel, other than a great curiosity to find out more. But the truth is that one of the most enduring of my family’s stories comes right out of Richmond.

My great-grandfather was wounded in 1865 at Fort Stedman during the Petersburg campaign. Alson Gray Thompson fought with the North Carolina 6th Infantry, and was part of Robert E. Lee’s final major charge, when the Confederates launched an all-out assault on the Union lines on March 25. It was earlier in the Petersburg campaign that a mine blew up a Confederate battery, leaving an impressive, still-visible crater; the action was featured in Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain. The later attack on Fort Stedman was every bit as deadly.

In the pre-dawn hours, my great-grandfather and his fellow soldiers marched through a ravine and then up toward the dirt-and-log fort. They then let loose the blood-curdling rebel yell and came charging with red battle flags and blazing guns. They seized the fort, but then, once the Union forces got organized, things didn’t go so well. Lee’s objective was to push the enemy back long enough to give him breathing room for a retreat. He ended up losing 4,000 men, one of whom was my great-grandfather, who took a bullet in the neck.

Thompson was taken to a temporary field hospital and from there to a hospital in Richmond, 25 miles north. He was in Richmond during the capital’s dramatic, fiery fall on April 2. Not being able to escape, he was captured and transferred to a prison camp at Point Lookout, Maryland. There he languished for two months with the bullet still lodged under his tongue. In June he swore an oath of allegiance to the United States and made his way home to his wife and farm.

My great-grandfather was lucky: He survived with his limbs intact, and the Minie ball became a family relic. He was able to work the land again and to help raise seven children, one of whom, my grandfather, would go to France in 1917 to fight in another great war. He fought as a U.S. soldier, just as his son, my father, would fight as a U.S. sailor in World War II. But those are other stories.

John Milliken Thompson

Read the Dew's Review of John's book HERE.

Sunday, August 21, 2011

A Boy’s First Flight

A Boy’s First Flight
by: Chris Wagner

The sudden invasion of sunlight burned my eyes, but oversleeping had made me late enough already. Ignoring my growling stomach I tore across our field and garden to the horse path that crossed my pa's cabin. I cut through the forest that surrounded our property taking something that looked a little like a trail in the making.

After running a good spell I decided to take a short break.
I stretched out my suspenders and let my breathing slow. The smell of cedar was strong in the air.

CLANK CLANK CLANK The sound of large metal pieces clanking together repeatedly echoed in my ear.

"Dag namit! Mr. Wilson started without me."

I took off running harder than I had been before. That clanking made me feel like our animals when ma started banging a pot to let them know it was feeding time. I had to get to the banging.
Finally, I reached the last hill, big, steep, and grassy. The morning dew made it a slippery climb, but every day when I reached this hill my eyes lit up. Enthusiasm pushed me up the hill. At the top I looked down the other side and saw Mr. Wilson, several wood sticks all smooth and round of various lengths, sheets of a paper like material Mr. Wilson had developed (in an experiment I had been unable to tear or punch a hole in this paper.), and Mr. Wilson's toolbox, which I knew contained all sorts of weird gadgets and things.

* * *

Mr. Wilson was an old professor. He told me once he had been fired from the local college for being too eccentric, at least I think that's the word. Anyways, Mr. Wilson is an inventor now, and I'm his assistant. Mr. Wilson was cutting that paper like fabric with special scissors he made.
I took off running towards him, shouting. "You're making the wings."

Something to glide through the air and a surprise was our project at the time.

When I reached Mr. Wilson, he glanced up at me stroking his long beard. "Hello, Albert,"

He then went back to work. He measured and pondered from all sorts of angles. I jumped around from place to place, so I could keep a good view. My heart had not stopped beating like crazy from the excitement. Pa would've made 'an ants in my pants,' comment and told me to settle down, but Mr. Wilson seemed to feed off my energy. The running and jumping eventually started to wear me down, and boredom spread throughout my muscles, weighing them down.

"Grab six toothpicks from my toolbox," Mr. Wilson ordered.
"Did you say something, sir?" I asked.

"Yes boy, yes! The design is in my head hurry before it escapes" Mr. Wilson's arms gestured frantically.

I rushed and got the toothpicks. Do not waste time was Mr. Wilson's number one rule. 'Wasted time is wasted inspiration' was his favorite quote.

He cut the paper like material into two lop-sided triangles, each no bigger than my palms. He then used the toothpicks to make frames for the triangles. I was back to my excited ways. When Mr. Wilson attached the wings to a small box, my insides started to tingle with anticipation.

We climbed to the top of the hill I had come over earlier, and Mr. Wilson tossed the winged box into the air. It floated down to the ground and stayed straight like a bird in flight. I strained my neck following the floating contraption to the ground. When it tapped the ground, I turned to Mr. Wilson with a smile so big I felt it stretching my face. The smile dropped at the sight of Mr. Wilson. He was kneeling. His head hung, shaking.

"Looks like I've got a lot of work to do," said the inventor.
“I thought it went pretty good."

Mr. Wilson turned his head and stared at me through the corner of his eye. "Pretty good? Did you not see how hard the device hit?"
Mr. Wilson stood up and looked at me.

"At least it didn't break." I slipped my hands in my pockets and scuffed my foot along the ground.

Mr. Wilson raised his arms over his head. "If you consider the velocity at which the item hit and adjust for scale, if the item would have been at full size and mass, it would have shattered into a hundred pieces." As he said pieces, Mr. Wilson’s arms flung down.

With his flailing arms and wild expressions, it was hard not to laugh, but I held it inside. He was serious, and I did not want to be rude.

Designing, building, and testing filled the rest of the week. We worked on those wings and the cabin over and over. When one design would float down and land as soft as Mr. Wilson wanted, we would increase the size and weight of everything.

The work got harder with everything getting bigger and heavier, but each successful glider was exciting in its own way.

The last day of the week finally came and when I was walking away Mr. Wilson let me know after the weekend he would have the surprise ready.


* * *

That night, when my chores were finished, I was still up in the clouds with my dreams as I prodded to the house for some rest.
When I reached the front door my pa called out to me. "Albert, come to the barn."

The barn was the place pa called me for important talks, bad news, and punishments. When I was called to the barn without knowing why, fear, nervous, and worry churned in my gut.
"Pa?" I called out as I stepped through the barn doors.

"Over here, son." My pa was leaning against a wall near a pile of straw.

I approached him cautiously. The pipe he smoked and the fact he didn't yell at me to hurry up made me think I wasn't in trouble.
"Yes sir?" I asked when I got to him.

Pa stretched the straps of his overalls. This was something he did when he was thinking.

"Son, I know you like working with Mr. Wilson, but we got the spring planting coming up. Your chores are already getting done late. I'm afraid you can't work with him any more."

I wanted to tell him no, but I couldn't go against pa's wishes.
"But pa, we're almost finished. Can't I please stay on just a little longer?"

"Sorry, son. I'll tell him, at church Sunday, I need you here on the farm."

That last statement was said I pa's 'that's final voice, but I had to see what the big surprise Mr. Wilson had promised me. I hung my head and faked a little pout.

“Can I ask you one more thing, pa?”

“Sure son.”

“Since I won’t get a chance for awhile, can I go fishing tomorrow?”

My pa was pretty tough on me at times, but he was always fair.
“Why sure boy, I just might come with ya.”

“I’d just like to be alone with my thoughts this time. If that’s ok with you, Pa.”

“Well Ok, I understand.”

Pa walked away after that. My heart hurt from deceiving him. I had not intentions of going fishing. In my head, I figured that wasn’t a lie. There had been no actual mention of where anybody was going, but if liars go to hell, I sure was standing on the shores of the lake of fire.


* * *

Guilt, curiosity, and excitement kept me anxious and awake till dawn. When our rooster crowed, I was out of my bed like it was on fire, and I did my chores faster than ever before. Pa and ma were just getting up, when I was heading out the door with my fishing pole. Ma’s face nearly hit the floor, when I turned down breakfast.

Once out of sight, I hid my pole in some bushes and headed to Mr. Wilson’s house. The sounds of his shop let me know he was hard at work before I got there. His shop (as he called it) was basically a large barn that had all of Mr. Wilson’s inventions and stuff. If I tried to explain all that was in there, a person who had not seen it would think I was making it up. He had all sorts of things that seemed to move all by themselves. These things went up and down, side to side, around and around.

When I got to the door, I walked inside. Mr. Wilson was at a table wearing some sort of helmet and appeared to be hard at work.

“Hi,” I said a little nervously.

Mr. Wilson stopped immediately and turned back toward me. He looked confused for a moment, but that look was quickly replaced with a pleasant one.

“Hello my boy, what brings you to the shop this early in the morning?”

“My pa says I got to quit helping you because it’s the planting season, and he needs me. And well, I really wanted to see the surprise you had for me.”

“That’s what will make you go far my boy, your insatiable curiosity. Unfortunately, I may not be able to get you your surprise. It seems I have hit a snag. Come here. I’ll show you.”
We walked to the back of the shop. There in front of me was the wings Mr. Wilson had designed hanging several feet off the ground from very thin ropes. The wings were bigger than I had seen them on the hill. Between the wings was a box filled with what looked like metal flowers all touching each other. Mr. Wilson called these metal flowers gears. These gears were surrounded by what looked like a very long thing belt that led out to each wing. Mr. Wilson switched some lever and the gears started to turn. It looked like one turning gear made the others turn the way they were touching each other. This made the belts start to move. The belts made the wings start to move up and down. My mouth and my eyes went as wide as they ever have before, but when I looked at Mr. Wilson to see if he shared my excitement, he was shaking his head in disappointment.

“What’s wrong? It looked like it worked to me.” I asked.
It works perfectly. Except, I can’t get the damn wings synchronized, and that is the most important part.”

I looked at the wings again and they were still moving up and down. They looked sorta like bird wings flapping in the air, but they were not together like bird wings. I thought about what to say or how to help, but my mind was filled with nothing but blankness.

“No matter how many adjustments I make to this machine, I just can’t get it right.” Mr. Wilson said.

Then an idea hit me. I rushed over to one of Mr. Wilson’s tool boxes and started getting out several gears and a couple belts.
“What are you doing, boy?” he asked me.

“I can’t stop now. You always say idleness wastes inspiration. I got an idea.”

Mr. Wilson watched as I brought everything over to him.
“What we need is another box thing like the one you got controlling both wings. If you got one box for each wing then just start them both at the same time. The wings should work together, and if you want them to work separate, just slow down or speed up each wing as you need.” I explained excitedly.
Mr. Wilson leaned forward and shook his head. I filled with disappointment and tried to figure out what was wrong with my plan. Then Mr. Wilson grabbed me and hugged me tight.

“My boy, you are a genius. I cannot believe I did not think of that.”

Like a whirlwind, Mr. Wilson went to work. He took apart the first box and made two smaller boxes just like it. I watched and helped out where needed. Pretty soon both wings had their own little box attached to them.

“Well boy, I think we need to give this a try.”

This was the first time I remembered hearing a little nervousness in Mr. Wilson’s voice. I stood back a few steps not wanting to get in the way of the test.

“I’m waiting boy,” Mr. Wilson said to me. “It was your idea. Don’t you think you should be part of the test?”

“I walked over to one of the boxes and looked over at Mr. Wilson. He looked over and nodded for me to take the lever of my box. We both had lever in hand. I know mine was getting wet from the sweat of my palm.

“Ok boy, when I say three, we both switch our levers.”

I nodded.

“One…Two…Three…”

We switched our levers at the same time, and the wings started to flap. This time they were perfectly together just like bird wings. Mr. Wilson made some adjustment to the ropes and the wings started to rise slowly toward the ceiling. I wanted to shout with excitement, but Mr. Wilson shut off both boxes and went to grab a couple chairs.

“Come on boy! We may as well give this thing the real test. Help me get everything loaded.

We loaded up the wings and all their attachments along with the chairs in Mr. Wilson’s wagon. We both attached a couple of his horses, and we were soon on our way to the hill where all our hard work had been done.

* * *
At the hill, we got out everything and dragged it up to the top of the hill. I was following Mr. Wilson’s orders, but I was still having trouble believing what I thought we was about to do. Mr. Wilson attached the wings to the chairs so they hung laid out flat over them like a roof or canopy of some kind. The boxes for each wing hung in front of the chairs.

“Are you ready, boy?” Mr. Wilson asked.

I shook my head. I had never been so scared in all my life. “I don’t know, sir. What if it doesn’t work?”

Mr. Wilson clasped my shoulders with his hands. “Boy, why do you think we did all that work last week. “We put a lot more weight on these wings than the two of us. What happened to that weight?”
I thought for a moment. “It just glided down and landed softly on the ground.

“That’s right. Now, do you want to be the first boy to fly or not?”

I looked carefully at my empty chair, Mr. Wilson in his chair, and the wings. I was still very scared, but Mr. Wilson had said something very true earlier. I was a very curious person. I sat in my chair. Mr. Wilson grabbed the box for his wing, and I grabbed mine. He nodded at me, and I nodded back to him.

“One… Two… Three…”

We both switched our levers. The wings started to flap in perfect unison. We started to rise into the air. A tingle started in my finger tips the hill. The trees, everything around us started to get smaller and smaller. My nervousness and fear were soon replaced with excitement and the tingle spread through my body. Nerves kept my head from looking down too much, but slowly my gaze lowered. I could see the area we had worked, the local farms, and the entire town.

"That's my house," I shouted. "Do you see it, Mr. Wilson? "Do you see my house?"

"Yes boy, I see your house," Mr. Wilson said with the biggest smile I ever seen on his face.

We continued to look around. Each new thing I recognized added to my joy and excitement. I saw the lake I was supposed to be at fishing. The whole lake from shore to shore was visible, and I felt so small thinking of how I had swam in that lake.

Mr. Wilson would sometimes tell me to turn off my machine then turn it back on again. He would do the same with his, and this would make us turn this way and that way. If we wanted to go lower we would both turn off our machines and start to float back to Earth. To get back up, we just turned the machines back on. One time going up, we rose above some clouds. I never in all my life thought I would see the tops of clouds. They looked like I could jump out and walk on them.

I of course knew this would be folly to try, so I let out a great, "Yahoo!"

That was the only way to let out some excitement before I exploded.

I don’t know how long we stayed up in the air, but it felt like not long enough. Though it was hours. When it was time to land, we glided slowly to the ground and landed softly back on the hill. I got out my chair and leaped in the air letting out another joyous yell. The sun told me I had been gone way too long and probably had a whoopen coming when I got home, but I did not care this had been the best day of my life.

# # #

Author: Chris Wagner
Chris is a blue collar worker living in the Cleveland, Ohio area with a writer's heart. He has two kids in Ohio and a wonderful family in Oklahoma. His work has been published in Midwestern Literary Magazine.

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Grandma Spongy

Grandma Spongy
By Jane-Ann Heitmueller

Our grandma was a sponge. Well, that’s what she use to tell us. “Life is short,” she’d proclaim. “You’ve gotta soak up every last drop!” Due to her well known philosophy she affectionately became known to everyone as Grandma Spongy. She was one unique and interesting lady who was truly saturated with life.

Grandma liked to call herself a spiritual, not religious person, and had a firm belief in a power far greater than mankind, though never could figure out just what that might be or if there was a true hereafter. “Until I know for sure, I’m gonna consider each day as all there is to life.” Grandma accepted her days as precious gifts that she eagerly unwrapped and relished.

“Sleep is overrated,” she always said. “There’s too much to see, hear, do and accomplish. Why waste all that time with your eyes shut?” She greeted every new day with joy and anticipation, rising while she could view the sun’s brilliant rays beginning to silently peek over the horizon and the moon slowly fade from the brightening sky overhead. Contentedly sipping her morning coffee, while rocking on the front porch of her old farmhouse, Grandma would almost burst with appreciation for the beauty around her, eagerly making plans to fill the next twenty-four hours she had been allotted. She held no pity for slackers. “How on earth can anyone say they are bored? Why everywhere you look there’s somethin’ to do, new things to learn. All ya gotta do is open your eyes!”

“People never stop to listen or look at their surroundings any more,” Granny could tell us. “Do ya hear that mockin’ bird? Look, there’s the mother wren takin’ fat, juicy worms to her babies. Watch out… don’t step on that frog! Boy, that chatterin’ squirrel sounds really upset. Let’s stop the car and help that poor, slow turtle crossing the road before some fool driver comes along and smashes it. Just imagine…when you watched that calf bein’ born in the stable yesterday, you were the very first person on this earth to ever see this brand new life!” I can’t recall the number of times I heard her insistent reminder to us, “You must remember to walk lookin’ both up and down, up and down, not just straight ahead, and keep those things on the side of your head wide open!” She so respected and enjoyed nature and all it had to offer, often saddened that so many folks seemed unaware of the magnificent world at their very fingertips.

Although she genuinely liked people and had numerous acquaintances, always showing them kindness and concern, Grandma never felt the need to get too close to another person. She was a solitary soul, quite comfortable in her own skin. However, I once heard her remark that she would sometimes dearly love to get away from herself. “It’s like I’ve got some pesky Siamese twin draggin’ around behind me. Seems I’ve got no other choice in the matter, so I guess I’ll just have to put up with the old gal…but she sure does get on my nerves sometimes!”

“Maybe in another life I was an animal,” she’d ponder. “Animals don’t have ulterior motives. They’re just what they appear to be.” We loved to hear her stories about various pets she had enjoyed since childhood. “Mercy, I can’t imagine a home without a pet…gotta have my critters around. If ya’ll ever just can’t put up with me any longer and decide to send me away to a nursin’ home some day, please be sure it’s one that lets the residents have animals.” She poured love and care onto her animal friends, knowing that in due time she would sadly have to bid each good bye, yet knowing that “next in line” was always on the way. One day Grandma sat down in her rocking chair with a pad and pencil, trying to name all the pets she had had during her lifetime and even surprised herself at the length of the list. She had a pet cemetery out behind the old wash house and knew exactly where each of her little friends was laid to rest. Sometimes we could hear her out there just before sun up, walking from grave to grave, patting each one gently and whispering to her babies. “Good mornin’, Snitz. You were such a sweet little girl. Betsy Marie, I really do miss you. Hope you’re restin’ well, Tinker. Are you comfy in your little red coat?”

“I sure can’t understand why folks seem to think they have to have so many clothes these days. They just go on buyin’ more duds when they’ve already got a closet packed full o’ the things.” Her philosophy was that one needed only three outfits in their wardrobe; one dressy outfit, one warm winter outfit and something loose, comfortable and cool for warm days. Shoes were considered a mere necessity for safety. Not only did she preach these ideas, but practiced them herself.


Black dress pants and a nice blouse seemed appropriate for church or funerals, her one piece, zip up, gray flannel jumpsuit was perfect for the frigid days of winter and a lightweight sundress was exactly what she needed for spring and summer. She never varied in the first two choices, but splurged when it came to the sundress, occasionally purchasing a new one, but only if it suited her fancy and requirements.

As the cool days of winter subsided, Grandma scanned the local newspapers for upcoming yard sales. She detested shopping at “regular” stores and thought it was plain foolish to spend so much money on such shoddy seamstress work that the stores sold this day and time. “My Lord,” she’d say in disgust. “They’re nothin’ but a bunch o’ rags. I could do better with a roll o’ duct tape and a stapler!” I imagine it had been twelve to fifteen years since she darkened the doorway of a real store. “Heck, let the other fellow spend the big bucks. When they get tired of those clothes and put ‘em in a yard sale I’ll buy ‘em for little or nothin’. Besides, breakin’ in a brand new pair of shoes will might near kill a fellow!”

Over the years Grandma ended up with three wearable sundresses. The red, black and while flowered one suited her fine, but didn’t allow her to get enough sunshine on her shoulders when she was outside digging in her beloved dirt. I never quite understood her thinking there, because she didn’t dare go outside without her old, floppy straw hat and sunglasses to protect her from the bright sunshine.

The second sundress was a cotton frock decorated with bold purple and white stripes and string like shoulder straps The left strap kept falling down and bothered her while she attempted to complete her daily chores. She’d grumble under her breath about the constant aggravation, “One of us is lopsided. It’s either me or this dang dress.” Needless to say, Grandma didn’t wear that dress very often, only when the other two were drying on the clothesline in preparation for wear later in the week.

Her very favorite and most frequently worn sundress was perfect! It was bright orange, the exact brilliance of that early morning sun she so anticipated, and splattered with tiny, delicate blue and white flowers, much like the field of wildflowers flourishing behind the horse barn. It hit her just above the knees and the bodice was snug, yet comfortable. We always laughed, saying that “Comfortable” was Grandma Spongy’s middle name. “Life’s too short to go around in a bind!” she’d proclaim. We came to the conclusion that she loved this dress so much because it vividly displayed the scenes of nature that brought such joy and comfort to her life each day. Grandma loved to wear this sundress and once she wrapped it on, along with her ever present apron, floppy hat, sunglasses and flip flops, she was “ready to roll”. Watch out world…here she comes!

When the brisk, crisp days of winter approached it was difficult for Grandma to give up that orange sundress. For a few weeks she would simply put on her favorite paint spattered , but warm, sweatshirt over the top of her dress. When the days grew even more chilly, she’d add some leggings underneath. As you can imagine, this was a rather comical…what she would call, “ratty”, looking outfit. If someone happened to unexpectedly come to the door Grandma Spongy took it all in stride and promptly greeted her bewildered guest with her best model’s stance, a cheerful smile and welcoming “Trick or treat”! When the temperatures grew uncomfortably cold for her she’d begrudgingly break down, pack her beloved dress away in the trunk at the foot of her bed for the season and pull out her cherished tattered, flannel jumpsuit… which the family had threatened for years to burn. She just couldn’t imagine living through a winter without that well loved garment encasing her body like a cozy cocoon. “Yummy,” She’d say, closing her eyes, sporting a huge smile and hugging herself in a big bear hug. “This feels sooooo good!” Grandma Spongy and her winter uniform were prepared to face the frigid days ahead.

“You know, I woke up the other day and realized I’m an old lady! Well, actually, all I have to do is look in the mirror to know that. The exact reason I don’t look in the mirror much any more.  Gotta remember, of course,  I’m only gonna be around till I’m seventy-four , so I’ve got to pack  lots o’ livin’ into my next four years.  Death doesn’t scare me , it’s the dying  I  sorta dread. I’m not a fool about pain, but no use frettin’ over any of it, we’ve all got to die sooner or later and we gotta take whatever comes our way. When you stop to think about it, I suppose you could say that life is a terminal illness. After all, the minute you’re born you start dyin’. When I leave this earth I hope I’ve used up every last bit o’ me! I’m lookin'  at death as my next big adventure…might as well.”

“If I had my druthers there’s only one thing I’d like to happen the day I’m buried. I sure do hope it rains. I wish the sky would open up like that big mouth on Jonah’s whale and dump down buckets and buckets of fierce rain… big splashy drops. I love rain! There’s nothin’ more fun than runnin’ around naked in the lower pasture in the cool, refreshin’ rain, ‘specially after a long hot, dry spell.” Puzzled by her request, we asked, “But why would you want that to happen, Grandma?” “Two reasons,” she would answer. “First, it’s my favorite kind of weather day, and after all, since it’s suppose to be my big day, I believe I’m entitled to that one final request I’ve always heard about. Secondly, for those folks who feel obligated to come to the cemetery, but don’t really want to, bad weather will be a wonderful excuse and we’ll be left with a gatherin’ of only folks who truly love me!” Made perfect sense to our grandma… made perfect sense to us.

Sure enough…Grandma’s prediction came true. One lovely spring morning in her seventy-fourth year she didn’t wake up to greet the sunrise. Instead, I like to imagine that Grandma Spongy awoke with a huge grin on her face, running full speed with outstretched arms, barreling headlong with eagerness into that amazing next great adventure she always spoke of with such joy and excitement!

Many years prior, in preparation for this day, she had set a small box on her bedside table. Although she never locked it, she made us swear on all that is right and good that none of us would open it until she was gone. Surprisingly, yet out of our deep love and respect for her, we all kept that promise. No matter how much we were tempted over the years, no one ever dared peek inside that sacred vessel.

Gathering reverently around her bedside that glorious spring morning we were anxious to finally receive Grandma Spongy’s legacy. Gently, the oldest grandchild lifted the lid and suddenly gasped in surprise at the contents. Inside the little brown, wooden box was a yellow, faded, well worn piece of paper with the handwriting of a young child, bearing the words of a poem our grandmother had written. It was dated July, 1935, when she was just ten years old. As Susan quietly read the poem aloud we were immediately touched to learn that her poem contained Grandma’s wishes for what life should be. Her life goals were set, even at such a tender age. A little note at the bottom of the poem instructed us what to do next. It read: Please read this at my funeral. It’s all I will need that day. I know you will honor my wishes and I love and thank you all.

So honor Grandma Spongy’s wishes we did… no frilly words, pricey flowers or showy coffin, no tears or wailing, rather joyous smiles and hearts filled with numerous lessons and abundant memories of our colorful grandma… who laid peacefully before us wearing her cherished orange sundress, but no shoes. Folded carefully and tucked lovingly under the pillow at her head was a little something for the cold days ahead…we’d dare not let our Grandma Spongy go to her big adventure without her beloved snug, gray jumpsuit!

Struggling to hold our umbrellas securely over our heads, as they whipped around in the slashing rain, we each listened intently as the minister read these words spoken from our grandmother’s heart so long ago:



Today
1935



Today I‘m gonna laugh and smile and learn and love and play,

‘cause what’s important is right now…not any other day.



I’ll soak up sights and sounds and joys and fill my soul with glee,

Because this day’s the only one …that’s truly promised me.



No time for past or future thoughts, no worries and no fears,

I’ll live my days in happiness… without sadness or tears.

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Letters From The Barn: A Meditation On Milking

I bought a new pitcher to strain the milk into after milking each day. It's a simple one, but it's pretty. Kind of cream, with pretty pinkish flowers on it. Now, anyone who's ever milked knows that milking itself is NOT pretty. Which is why, perhaps, I so love my sweet, little pitcher for the fridge.

And, it's not that little either, but what else is sweet? I guess sweet is big, too. I am big. No way could I battle horned goats if I were not. Or, perhaps there is, but I'll let someone else find out about that.

One thing that is not sweet is straining milk. The step that comes right before the pretty pitcher. Did you ever consider what used to be in your milk before it got into the carton? Not horrible things, evil things, just grass. Or a stray piece of straw.

Actually, the original owner of any cartoned cow juice has probably not just grazed prior to milking and is being milked mechanically, sanitized for your protection. So, let me state this another way. If you were milking just for yourself or maybe a few neighbors, the old fashioned way, do you know what might be in there?

The oddest things, you might find. Whatever has grabbed a ride on your cow or goat (or buffalo...whatever it is that you milk for your pleasure or hunger) through the day. A stray bit of clover. A damp, drowning violet. A few, innocent cow hairs.

You might even wind up with a whole colony of wee beings from Horton Hears A WHO in there. You just never know. I do listen for the wee, little voices calling for help out of the sea of milk drifting on a clover flower some days, but to this moment, I've yet heard none.

Something that has happened is that I've gotten used to fresssssssh milk. I can't stand it even three days old now. I pour it out for the other animals. I really can not bear it. I KNOW how it's supposed to taste. I feel like i'm eating a rotten apple and trying not to grimace when I drink it any older than two. Isn't that odd? It starts to make sense why my grandfather's side always had a family cow. (And a lot of kids to go milk it early in the morning!)

I'm quite sure it's technically stable for longer than that. Maybe it's kinda like eating a tomato right out of the garden. You know, one that's warm with the sun still on it as you put it straight in your mouth. That's a freshness with Mother Nature's (or whoever you give a tip of the hat to) thumbprint still on it.

Similarly, fresh, um, squeezed milk is the same way. It's refreshingly neutral. Almost a non taste. But in a good way. Like water. But different. I don't know how to explain. What a commercial I would be. Hurry and buy my milk that tastes just like water! But, in a good way. I'll give you a good price on it. No more than Perrier, I promise.

___________________________

Author: Meriwether O'Connor

Friday, August 12, 2011

Jimmy Bacon Stays Up Past The Tonight Show

Jimmy Bacon Stays Up Past The Tonight Show

Jimmy Bacon ate my toes off last year. First his name was Jimmy, the dog. Then, Jimmy, you want your bacon? Then, as that is what he loved most (or what I thought he loved most), gradually just plain Jimmy Bacon. I found out last year he loved me most.

He didn't intend to eat my toes. Or, he did, but it was not how it sounds. Well, it was how it sounds, but not violent. I was asleep. I can't feel my toes. He was trying to help me.

I had a sore on the big one. Maybe a sore on the one next to it, too. The second one if you're playing little piggy. It's hard to know now as that is well, no more. I had been dressing the wound regularly on the big toe, but Jimmy Bacon apparently thought I had not been up to snuff in my medical tending duties.

I knew he'd sniff and give it the odd lick while I was awake watching tv. Haven't you had a dog do that? They're trying to be nice, like a monkey picking nits (or what they think is nits) out of your hair. They're grooming you. Showing loyalty. They're bonding with you. So that you can all get together and save each other from the lion or whatever goes bump in the night.

Well. Since I live in a home with no lions present, Jimmy Bacon perhaps over groomed me that night as he had no lions to fight off.

You can't see me, or the insulin needles on my kitchen table, so I'll just say it. I have the sugar. It makes my toes and fingers funny and I don't feel in them so good as I used to. That's good, but bad. Well. Maybe good. I don't know.

When I called dispatch for our county, they thought I was drunk. It's true, I've been known to fall down a time or two. But I was wide awake this time. I will say this for the old boy, Jimmy Bacon's medical tending was second to none. You never saw a cleaner wound site. He had stayed up past the Tonight Show and then into the late night hours nibbling and tending and worrying that wound until it was no more.

So, though he was as proud as punch when I woke up, licking my face to come examine his handiwork, the amazing vanishing wound that was no more, well, I vomited right over him. He seemed to take that in the spirit intended and began cleaning that up, too. You've got to admit dogs are loyal.

The sheriff showed up along with the county and led Jimmy Bacon off by the collar. He went tail wagging. Then as they were outside getting in the car I panicked. The older attendant ignored me but the younger one must have had a dog, too, so he went and brought the sheriff back. Jimmy Bacon was secured in the car, I was told and would harm me no more.

But he just had a sweet tooth I told the sheriff, who looked angry. He must have been a cat person. Once i had vomited and had some toast while I was waiting for them to get there, I live kinda far out, I actually felt a bit better. Jimmy Bacon sat right by the foot protecting it from any further germs or bumps or bruises. I felt like the King of Persia. Minus a couple toes.

Once the commotion got here, though, I sort of lost my hope. The sirens were what made it hurt. All the noise and flashing lights. Until then, it was out of this world, like Mary's face in a tortilla only my dog eating my toes off. I wasn't sure it had really happened. By the time I woke up there was no blood. Jimmy Bacon could have gotten a degree from medical school. Well, probably junior college, but you know what I mean. He had done a good job. Unasked, though, that was the problem.


Also unasked, the county was protecting me from him. The sheriff waved something in my face, saying sign it so they could keep him voluntarily to test for rabies or he would just take him period and have him destroyed. Now, Jimmy Bacon didn't have no rabies. We both knew that. He would have eaten me all smack up if he'd had that, right? Maybe a few throw pillows and cushions, too.

But I signed it as thinking of him in the gas chamber was worse. After the quarantine, I was allowed to bring him back. He looked sheepish as if he knew he'd done something wrong to be sent away to the place that smelled like bleach and other dogs and had bars and no sofas to fall sleep on and no Tonight Show theme blaring us awake or or singing us to sleep, depending.

I kept him. I shouldn't of. I know. I do know. But I did. He never ate my toes again. Nor I, his, in the spirit of vengeance. But each morning, I take the first bite of his bacon now to remind him I got teeth, too.

_____________________________

Author: Meriwether O'Connor

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Kudzu

Kudzu
by Lindsey Walker

There’s no more sinister vegetation than kudzu. The vine gobbles whole forests at a rate of one foot per day. It winds around hearty trees, cutting off sunlight and oxygen, until those trees whither and collapse under the parasite’s weight.

Kudzu writhed up telephone poles as Dodger plowed north on Highway 5. It wriggled over power lines. Highway department better trim that soon, Dodger thought. He rubbed his eyes with his fingers and stuck one elbow out the window of his pickup. He thought about his wife, no, ex-wife, Jaylene. He wondered if she missed him, but he had to push those memories away. He concentrated his thoughts on his grandmother Irma, because the search for her house was the task at hand.
He’d never known Irma well, and now that she was dead he’d never get the chance. Dodger owned only a few childhood memories of his grandmother before her brain crumbled, and as he drove through the kudzu jungle, he tried to summon them. He conjured up Irma’s laugh: like summers and Dreamsicles and carousels. It made the opposite noise of the rusty key against the cotton inside his jeans pocket. He remembered that her home on Church Street had always smelled like zucchini bread.

He knew his grandmother had grown up in Dahlonega, descended from gold-rush panners. She had moved to Marietta after marrying his grandfather; they had raised two kids; she’d gone batshit and died. So when had she lived out here? No one knew a thing about it.

#

His grandmother had developed Alzheimer’s in her sixties. At first Irma did things that Dodger thought were funny, like running her purse through the dishwasher or microwaving the remote control. Within a few years, though, Irma lost the ability to care for herself. Holes gaped in her shrunken brain, and her frontal and temporal lobes stopped speaking to each other. When the police picked Irma up for wandering naked through the streets of Marietta, Dodger’s mother Alice and uncle Jarrett packed her off to a facility.

His mother had taken Dodger as a child to visit Irma at the Branching Sycamore Nursing Home. In the narrow hallway, an elderly woman with tobacco juice dribbling from her mouth rolled past him in her squeaky wheelchair wearing only one shoe. Another resident, a thin man with spotted, see-through skin sat in a metal folding chair singing. “Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home.” The old man clapped his hands in time. “Your house is on fire, your children alone.” Dodger didn’t like Branching Sycamore. He didn’t want to leave his grandmother here in the haunted rooms with mustard-brown walls.

His grandmother stuffed her sock drawer with cutlery she’d stolen from the nursing home cafeteria. Confused by Dodger’s shaggy hair, Irma called him by his mother’s name.

“These are my treasures, Alice,” Irma said. She dug around in the drawer and came up with a butter knife.

“It’s Dodger, Gramma,” he said.

His grandmother scrunched her eyes at him. “Alice, promise me,” she said, placing the butter knife in his hands and closing his fingers around it. “Promise me you’ll find him.”

Dodger stared at the silverware. Before he could ask what she meant, if she meant anything at all, his mother Alice, the real Alice, stepped into Irma’s room.
“Place is depressing,” his mother said.

“It smells like pee,” Dodger said.

His grandmother glanced back and forth from one Alice to another. “Oh.” She recoiled from the two of them, “Forgetting again, aren’t I?”

Dodger wound his cherub-chubby fingers through his mother’s calloused ones and rested his cheek on the back of her hand. He noticed the lines gathering around her eyes, the creeping ambush of age, for the first time then. She looked small beneath the fluorescent lights. Alice sucked her lips inward.

They visited Irma again, at first on weekends, then holidays only. Later on, they came less still. It took twenty years, but finally Irma died in a metal-railed bed on a thin mattress pad with a bedsore on the small of her back the size of a fist.

#

In the time between Irma’s arrival at Branching Sycamore and the time of her death, a sizeable chunk of Dodger’s life had been spent, missed moments they would never share. He had grown into and out of acne; he had been the best football player on his high school team and the worst player for his college; he had studied accountancy once he realized that the NFL lay beyond his talents. He had married Jaylene; they had both gotten fat, then she had left him. She never said why, just that she was leaving. Jaylene took the Pontiac and her Dean Koontz collection, and she ran away. Dodger was still mourning his marriage when his grandmother passed.
Irma’s ashes hadn’t even cooled off yet, when Jarrett found the will. He’d discovered it in a box of junk from the nursing home, a fat manila envelope with the words “To Be Read upon My Death” scrawled in Irma’s jittery old-lady handwriting. He invited Alice and Dodger to his house to have a look.
In Jarrett’s kitchen, Alice cooked Irma’s favorite dishes: chicken and dumplings, collards, okra, and French-cut green beans from a can. They drank Southern Comfort and Coke. Jarrett dug out some old photos.

“Look at my face here! I hated that shirt, and she made me wear it all the time!” Alice said.

“Least she didn’t give you home haircuts,” Jarrett said.

“Cruel sense of humor.”
“You know that’s why Ruthie turned me down.”

“Sure it wasn’t your breath?”

“Might’ve been,” Jarrett said.

Their laughter quivered, thin and unsteady, as the siblings remembered their mother. They seemed separate from Dodger, wrapped in a dreamy gossamer of nostalgia, guilt and relief.

Dodger loosed the top button from his jeans and finished off the last of the okra with his hands. He wished these hands held Jaylene instead of fried food; she’d always disapproved of him eating with his fingers. The empty bean can on the counter reminded him of the cans that had clunked behind his car on their wedding day. Through the whole marriage, he felt like one of those cans, dented up and chasing a girl going too fast. Now he was a tin can again, only this time defined by his hollowness, his ability to contain the residue of his former life.

After a few more drinks, Jarrett brought the will out and laid it on the kitchen table. The years-yellowed document read as a comedic tour de force. Most everything had already been sold with the money spent covering Irma’s medical bills. Dodger listened as his mother and uncle snickered over each asset named. The horses, the stocks, the Victrola, all gone.

“The Edsel!” Alice said, her blue eyes raw, her limp hair stringy as corn silk. “Member when she brought that beast home?”

“Daddy was fixing to have a heart attack then and there,” Jarrett said, scratching his chin through his grey beard. He read the rest of the will, using his index finger to lead his eyes over the words. “Hey, Dodge,” he said, “you’re in here, too. Couldn’t have been too far gone when she wrote it. ‘To my grandson, Dodger, I leave my home in Opossum Hill.’”

Alice stopped laughing. “Momma don’t have a home in Opossum Hill,” Alice said. “Opossum Hill?”

Jarrett shrugged and leaned forward on his elbows. “Never heard of her living out that way.”

“Sure you read that right?” Dodger asked.

“Is there a deed in there?” Alice was already pawing inside the envelope as she asked. “How can no one know about it?” She dumped its contents on the table: ticket stubs, a dance card, rosary, gum wrappers and a flat brass key.

#

Dodger kept the key on his nightstand for a week before adding it to his key ring. It stood out, contrasting with his modern house and car keys. It was a time traveler’s key. On Friday, he gave in to it, his sense of adventure, his desire for something new to do. He cranked up the Chevy and headed for Opossum Hill to find Irma’s hidden house.

From Highway 5, he hung a left onto Little Refuge Road, a narrow gravel affair cutting through a forest, and started counting house numbers. He needed number 5450. The terrain grew potted and the houses became trailers became shacks. Deciduous and evergreen trees locked branches above the road, and Dodger crept through this daytime penumbra, all Appalachian amber and virulent violet. The path hugged the curves of the hilly landscape, rounding this way and that. Honeysuckle and grape scents invaded the Chevy’s interior. Kudzu snarled around the tree trunks and drooped from branches. The trail seemed to grow brighter just ahead, and he headed toward this light, swerving past an uprooted tree. The gravel gave way to dirt, to two red clay ruts with a green hump in the middle.

The forest thinned, but the kudzu thickened. Underneath the deep growth, the trail vanished. Vine-clad trees twisted at crazy angles. They kneeled and flattened. Only kudzu sprawled before his eyes in green Rapunzel tendrils. He had passed the last residence a few miles back; he hadn’t seen an address past 5370. Dodger parked his truck, halfway up his tires in invasive flora, to search on foot.
Swathed in humidity, Dodger puzzled over his grandmother Irma as he waded through the dense kudzu infestation. He didn’t think about his physical movement; he just kept slogging forward through the leaves. His uncloaked thoughts mingled, connecting in ways that wouldn’t normally be allowed if his agenda-driven life hadn’t recently rocketed into disarray. He could forget Jaylene for tomorrow. He could remember to forget her that day, too.

Here where the woods ended, the vines tangled and rolled, as vast as an ocean, but without an ocean’s sense of equilibrium. The emerald plant grew unchecked, choking out all other vegetation in its gorgeous savagery. The kudzu thrived in the July heat, baking under the Georgian sun. The muggy air unfurled like a sweaty flag saturated with the vines’ grape odor. Dodger smashed a mosquito on his arm, and the bug’s blood (his own blood) mingled with his sweat. He could feel dampness weeping from his skin, wetting his cotton shirt and slicking the insides of his elbows and the backs of knees. No shade trees spread their branches here, and if he didn’t find Irma’s house soon, he felt certain he would die from heat stroke.
Then Dodger began to worry about snakes. He imagined more than once that the kudzu slithered. He glanced back at his truck, making sure it had not been swallowed by the vegetal menace. Insects buzzed under verdant tentacles. Heat rippled the air, making his surroundings appear to undulate. He blotted his wet forehead with his shirt. Dodger tripped over buried logs, wading deeper until his truck shrank to a pinprick.

Then he saw a lump, too abrupt to be a hill. He recalled a witch’s curse and the briars choking Sleeping Beauty’s castle. Dodger scrabbled through the green strands; he pressed his fingers into the tangled mound. He felt under the kudzu, his palms discovered wood. Pressed against the house’s walls, Dodger could feel his pulse, his heart beating through his fingertips. He circled the house, cutting his hands on a broken window before locating the doorknob. He buried the key in the hidden lock; it rattled loose. He ripped the foliage with his hands and pried the door. The hinges screamed like lost souls, and Dodger never felt as real as he did when he stepped into Irma’s home.

As his eyes adjusted, Dodger heard the ceiling groan under the weight of the plants. How long has this house sat empty? he wondered. What does it take for a vine to grow this violent? The kudzu had pushed its way through the windows; in the half-dark, thin light flickered off glass shards on the floor. Leaves pressed through cracks in the walls. The floor dipped to one side, and Dodger wondered if the roots might be pushing the house up from beneath.

Irma’s things sat probably close to where she left them. The one-room house had a small kitchen table and three chairs, three chairs for a mother and a father and someone else. The shelves held canned peaches, pickled okra, tomatoes with hand-written labels: Spring 1948, Summer 1947. A broom tipped against one wall, covered in the dust it once dusted away. Browned sheets were rumpled up on the unmade bed. Rats nested in one corner behind a wicker bassinet. This was Irma’s lost life, a life she practiced forgetting.

Dodger and Jaylene had wanted children. He traced his hand over the bassinet’s edge. Its maker had designed a tight brown weave. The tiny mattress was empty, except for a yellow knit blanket. Who slept here? His mother wasn’t old enough by at least ten years, nor his uncle.

The wind picked up outside, and the beams moaned in ghostly pain. The house structure rumbled under his feet. Dodger needed to get out of here; the air felt choked with dust and spiders. He thought about taking the bassinet; he wanted to uncover its secret. He needed to know the name of the tiny body who snuggled this blanket, but taking the bassinet felt like desecrating a church. He picked the bassinet up and placed it on the shelf with the jarred food, out of the reach of the rats, out of the reach of the grave-robbers, the kudzu and all the things that crawl.

Empty-handed, Dodger emerged from his home back into the daylight. He locked his door and heaved his way back to the truck. There are some things that are lost for good. There are some things forgotten on purpose.

________________________________________

Author Lindsey Walker:
Originally from Chattanooga, I write prose and poetry with a Southern accent. I am currently a student of writing in Seattle. I have won the national prize for best essay from the League for Innovation, the Marcia Barton Award for fiction and the Loft Poetry Contest. My work has been published by the Licton Springs Review and Section 8 Media, and can be seen in upcoming editions of the Steel Toe Review and the Dead Mule School of Southern Literature.